Amazon Hacks

Show Amazon Search Results on Your Site

You can have the best of both worlds: allow people to find what they’re interested in at Amazon, while still keeping them on your site.

With the release of Amazon’s Web Services API Section 6.2, it’s possible to keep your visitors on your site while letting them search Amazon.com. Beyond controlling the look, feel, and experience of your site, this also allows you to point to individual product detail pages in the subject areas your visitors are interested in. And because they can go directly to product detail pages, you have a better chance of getting the higher 15% referral fee for some books.

This solution takes a bit of scripting knowledge, but luckily the developers at My Book Vendor (http://www.mybookvendor.com/amazon/) have been busy scripting for you. You can add the following script to any Perl-ready server, and it can even be tweaked to fit your site’s design.

The Code

Add this code to a file called searchbox.cgi :

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# searchbox.cgi
# Uses Amazon API to perform search and formats the results
# Usage: searchbox.cgi?keywords=<Keywords>

#####################################################
# SITE VARIABLES
#####################################################

# Your Amazon Associates ID available at http://associates.amazon.com
$amazon_id="insert associate tag"; # Link back to the page where the searchbox is located. This is used # for links back to the search page at the bottom of the results $home="http://www.mybookvendor.com/searchbox/"; ...